Originally hired by Sam Walton to work in Walmart’s transport division, Lee Scott, who became president and CEO in 2000, is pretty much the stereotype of what many might imagine a Walmart executive to be. Tall, with sandy hair and a pale, almost forgettable face, he radiates a reassuring, no-nonsense air and Great Plains earnestness—a middle American who grew up in a small southeastern-Kansas town pumping gas at his father’s filling station and earned his degree at a state university while living in a trailer and working in a tire-mold factory.

A reminder of the American Dream. I know such stories are still possible today, I just hope they are more common than pessimists (or are they realists?) claim them to be.